Why Vertigo?

Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece Vertigo is my all time favorite film. I have seen it more than fifty times and every time I watch it I see something new. My most recent viewing I was drawn to Hitchcock's use of the color yellow. The film is renowned for the masterful use of red and green to create and enhance emotion, but on this viewing I noticed the yellow. In the apartment of the girlfriend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes). her sweater, the step stool, the curtains. The golden and soft browns of the furniture and wall coverings. I realized there was almost a complete absence of red and green in these scenes. Later when Scottie (Jimmy Stewart is having the nightmare the overhead shot shows a bright yellow blanket on his bed, dividing him in half. What was Hitch trying to say by using yellow like this. And what does it say about a film that, even after fifty viewings, it leaves it's audience wanting to know more.

Vertigo is unique. It is the singular vision of a master filmmaker. The entire film is created in his mind before a single piece of work is done. Then he story boards everything out so he can hold his visualization in his hands. But film is a collaborative effort with hundreds of people working to create a movie. With Vertigo all these people work, using their own unique talents to create the vision of one person. And they do it magnificently.

Alfred Hitchcock believed in pure cinema. The use of images and sound to tell a story without dialogue. In Vertigo he achieves this. There are long stretches of hypnotic beauty, especially when Scottie trails Madeline (Kim Novak) around the city. As he follows her we can see his interest become more than curiosity. The first half of the film has a dream-like quality as Scottie falls in love with the mysterious Madeline.

If the first half of the film is a dream, the second half is a living nightmare for Scottie. Now he is trapped with his obsession for the deceased Madeline. His entire life is dictated by the need to have something back which has been lost. Never has an actor so clearly played someone who is haunted by obsessive love, then Jimmy Stewart in the last half of Vertigo. 

I am a great fan of Jimmy Stewart and I think he gives the best performance of his career. In Vertigo and in the last half of It's A Wonderful Life he takes his famous "everyman" character and shows us the dark side of human nature. The "Mr. Hyde" that is inside all of us, made all the more fearful because it was Jimmy Stewart, the gentle man so beloved.

Kim Novak is also outstanding. There has been a lot of critical comments written about her performance, but I believe it is the best of her career. Throughout the film she plays a woman who's primary emotion is fear. In the first half she is involved ** spoiler alert** in a murder plot and fear of being caught can't be far from the surface. Then she falls in love with Stewart and is afraid of losing him if she proceeds with the plan. But she must proceed because things have gone too far already. Then, in the second half of the film she is a woman afraid of being found out. Afraid of not being loved for who she is. Afraid of being re-created as the deceased Madeline and afraid that Scottie will only ever love her as Madeline. She is the typical cool blond on the surface, but the fear is there, in her eyes in her voice, always just under the surface. An excellent portrayal.

The movie stars Stewart and Novak, but it also stars San Francisco. Hitchcock came to the city in 1951 and it's visual beauty is what inspired him to film Vertigo here. The city is almost like a living breathing character in the film as Scottie and Madeline travel its streets in search of something they will never find.

As I mentioned earlier in a Hitchcock film every detail is thought out and Vertigo is no exception. The camera only pans left to right in the early part of the film and right to left in the second half. Madeline is shot in right profile and Judy in left. The movement of the camera and the actors have repeated circular patterns. All of this to draw the viewer inward. Scenes alternate from day to night, patterns are created and repeated over and over again. Almost hypnotic just like the spirals in the opening credits.

Saul Bass is the man who redefined what movie credits could be created one of his best works for Vertigo. Another of Hitchcock's collaborator's Bernard Hermann created his greatest work and one of the best movie scores ever written when he created the hauntingly romantic music for Vertigo.

I first saw vertigo when I was very young. It was broadcast on TV and i watched it. This had to be sometime between 1967 and 1969. I was aware it was a Hitchcock film. Even at that age I knew who he was because of his TV show and I had already seen The Birds a few times (I watched it whenever it was on). Vertigo along with Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Trouble With Harry, were personally removed from circulation by Hitchcock in 1970. They were not shown in a theatre or on TV for the next thirteen years, until Universal negotiated the rights with Hitchcock's estate. In October 1983 all five films were shown in theatres and I attended the premieres of all of them. 

I loved each and every one of them but the images from Vertigo stayed with me. My mind vividly recalled images of the film from when I watched it as a child. I distinctly remembered the opening rooftop scene. The scene when Madeline jumps in the bay and the scene in the bell tower. Obviously something about this film had touched a nerve in me. I also remembered that the film had created a romanticized image of San Francisco and I think that is where I got the desire to live here.

All five films were released to home video in 1984 and I owned all five on RCA Selectavision discs and then later on VHS. But even then I knew about "pan and scan" and VistaVision and knew something was missing. In 1996 I attended the world premiere of the restored version of Vertigo at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City and that was a huge event. I was blown away at how beautiful the film was and I was drawn into it's hypnotic spell all over again. I have owned the film on laser disc and DVD and I am sure I will buy it when it comes out on Blu-ray.

I have seen it screened twice more on the big screen, once at Lincoln Center in NYC, and at The Castro Theatre here in SF.

Vertigo is the greatest work of one of cinema's most creative geniuses and that is why it is my favorite film.

At The Movie House rating ****